Chapter 694 WoawChat

Although the independent information network will pay a lot of costs in the process of localization in European countries - not only does it need to improve the multilingual support of the website, but it also needs to hire a considerable number of people in each country to maintain the website.

But these are very necessary. After all, SEM Group hopes to become a media group with global influence like BBC, CNN and News Corporation, rather than just limited to the UK. Therefore, expanding their audience through the emerging Internet will also be an effective way.

After all, in terms of the source of news and information, in addition to the original independent newspaper group, they also have Reuters Group and other partners.

The primary goal of SEM Group is to radiate its communication network throughout Europe and extend it to Asia and Australia.

It's not that SEM Group does not want to enter the most important North American market, but the key is that the competition in this market is too fierce, and even BBC cannot gain an advantage there.

Therefore, in the future, Barron will still enter the North American market by investment.

Speaking of which, the current stage is in the process of transforming the PC-side Internet to the mobile Internet.

Just like Barron knows that mobile Internet will rise in the future, and since the launch of IPhone and Honor Mate 1, coupled with the popularization of 3G network, it has already represented the opening of the era of mobile Internet.

Therefore, whether it is Woaw or Argos, companies have begun to lay out the mobile Internet era and have launched corresponding mobile APPs one after another.

But now the number of smartphone users and the speed of 3G network have not yet reached the level of the later period.

Just like YouTube has not yet launched an APP, it is because the 3G network of mobile phones is not enough to support users to access videos on mobile phones...

Therefore, although the layout has begun, it still needs to wait patiently until the user base of mobile Internet reaches a certain level.

Why do many companies based on smartphone applications stand out after the Internet enters the mobile Internet era? The reason is that traditional Internet companies did not expect the development of mobile Internet to be so rapid, so they just transplanted PC products to mobile phones.

But in terms of the user experience of smartphone users, these transplanted applications are still very different from applications specially made based on the operation method of smartphones, which enables those emerging companies to quickly accumulate users and develop.

Barron is also trying his best to avoid this. Therefore, both Woaw APP and Argos APP are completely based on the operation mode of touch-screen smartphones. In addition, Woaw Technology has also launched the chat application WoawChat APP.

WoawChat APP allows users to register directly using their mobile phone numbers, and users can choose to have it read their mobile phone address books, so that they can directly add friends who have registered WoawChat in their mobile phone address books, and recommend friends who have not registered WoawChat to download and register.

To put it bluntly, WoawChat is similar to Whatsapp and WeChat, and is a social software completely based on smartphones.

Once launched, WoawChat quickly became popular with users and was quickly promoted through users' real social networks.

It's just that the reason is that the proportion of smartphone users is not high at present, and WoawChat has only launched applications for iOS and Android systems. The launch of Google's GOS system version is still on the agenda, so in terms of the overall number of users, it is definitely not comparable to chat software such as MSN and Google message.

But Barron knew that WoawChat represented the future. As long as it continued to develop in this way and did not make too big mistakes, it would become a dominant social application like Whatsapp in the world.

Then again, with WoawChat, it was still unknown whether Whatsapp could still develop like in the past.

Because in fact, Whatsapp had already been launched at this time, but Whatsapp 1.0 at this time was not a chat software, but could display the user status on the phone.

Just like the PC version of Skype at this time had a new function that could display "busy" and "online" status, but such a function did not appear on the mobile phone.

The design concept of Whatsapp at this time was this: before the user made a call, he could open WhasApp to see if the other party was online.

But obviously, this function was not popular with users...

In the original time and space, until this year when Apple launched the "notification push" function, Whatsapp developed a message function, which turned it into an instant messaging software, and since then Whatsapp has become popular with users.

But now, WoawChat has been launched ahead of Whatsapp and has made its functions more comprehensive, so everything has changed.

It is difficult for Whatsapp to be as popular as before...

Even so, Barron still sent people to keep an eye on the development of Whatsapp. Once it changes, Blue Valley Capital will find them to invest. After all, IC Capital managed by Ivanta is one of the major shareholders of Woaw. After Woaw launched the WoawChat APP, if Whatsapp is still preparing to be an instant messaging application, it will not accept investment from IC Capital. It is safer to invest in the name of Blue Valley Capital.

And Barron knows that the founders of Whatsapp have another habit, that is, they hope to cooperate with as few investors as possible. In their previous life, their early financing almost only chose Sequoia Capital.

So even if Whatsapp can still develop and compete with WoawChat, Blue Valley Capital can still become the main investor of Whatsapp with relatively loose investment conditions, and it will still be invested by Barron in the end.

And even if Whatsapp can develop, in Barron's previous life, Whatsapp was eventually acquired by Facebook.

Now that Facebook is gone, it is not impossible for Woaw to acquire Whatsapp...

...

"I have convinced Ms. Lilina Bettencourt, Your Highness."

At this time, Barron received a call from Ashley Weber, bringing him good news.

At present, the lawsuit within the Bettencourt family is getting more and more intense, and Lilina Bettencourt and her daughter are at loggerheads.

Under this circumstance, although it would be difficult for Lilina Bettencourt to agree to sell the Bettencourt family's shares in the L'Oreal Group to the Gucci-Hermès Group - not to mention that Lilina Bettencourt is not really confused, she will not easily sell the Bettencourt family's shares, even if she is willing to sell, at this time her daughter Francoise Bettencourt Meyer is hoping to get control of the family's shares through litigation, so she can completely use this to ask the French side to temporarily freeze the Bettencourt family's holdings, and it is impossible to sell these shares.

But at this time, Lilina Bettencourt still controls the L'Oreal Group, so it is still possible to get her permission to sell the shares held by the Nestlé Group to the Gucci-Hermès Group.

You should know that in the previous agreement signed between the L'Oreal Group and the Nestlé Group, the Nestlé Group could not freely sell its shares in the L'Oreal Group before 2014 - because during this period, the Bettencourt family and the Nestlé Group had the priority to sell their shares in the L'Oreal Group.

Only after 2014, the Nestlé Group could freely sell their shares in the L'Oreal Group.